871–880 of 1001 posts
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I work remotely for a big US company and I have heard talk of similar plans within the company, offshoring entire products' engineering work to India. Luckily my work is very niche (vuln research). I can only imagine the subpar and vulnerability ridden code we'll be seeing over the next few years from all the offshoring + irresponsible overusage of AI tools.
Why would the code be subpar? Is a google employee in US somehow more competent than the one in India? What you are thinking about was outsourcing which is very different than Google hiring in India. Just because you are paid more you are not a ‘better’ programmer
It's not much to do with country/race and a lot to do with pay. I've been sitting through more interviews than I can count as my F500 company is trying the same thing. Despite alleged pre-screenings, I've been amazed by how many devs with 10+ years of experience on their resume that can't code fizzbuzz (let alone answer actual questions in a way I'd expect of a senior dev with that much experience).
Companies don't go to India for their best developers -- they go to save all the money they can. If a US dev costs $150k, they aren't going to spend $150k for an Indian dev. To make this scheme "worth it", they won't pay more than $75k (likely no more than $40-50k).
You get what you pay for. A smart, talented Indian dev isn't going to work for next-to-nothing. They're smarter than that. They'll relocate to the US/EU, work for a large Indian company (where they get better working conditions), or even work freelancer jobs instead.
Between Discord, Twitch, Amazon+Prime, and Google... what's the layoff pattern here? Are we talking about social community teams? Streaming/networking engineers? Or is there no connective thread between these four companies? Are there other corporate layoffs that round out this intrigue?
The only suggestion I've seen that would make some sense is Section 174: https://newsletter.pragmaticengineer.com/p/the-pulse-75
I feel sorry for the overseas labour that a US company startup would be now considering stopping for tax reasons. But I suppose they needed that 15 year amortisation clause (compared to 5 years for a US employee) to stop a flight-to-overseas labour effect of Section 174 (which is presumably 1/3 cheaper).
The framing I see it as is by comparison with the Gold Rush. In those times some made it big (finding Gold) but most of the (reliable) money was made by selling pick-axes.
Here the US is moving from a model where the successful startups cash out resulting in everyone getting paid: e.g. 40% California tax income comes from exits, to being one where the US government takes smaller cuts from medium to failing startups (due to gaining tax revenue of those companies making revenue in their first few years). The drawback is that fewer startups incubate long enough to have a chance of cashing out big.
Note also paying tax as an employee has a better fiscal multiplier to the economy than the owners paying a tax bill. (You buy products and services with your salary more so than wealthy owners on a proportionate basis.)
I find this all quite surprising for the US government, and US innovation culture.
Google makes me kind of sad. They used to be so cool, pushing technology forward, making it accessible to the masses, doing things that seemed almost impossible and making it mainstream. Ads were the money stream but they did it tastefully. Now the main page is all ads, dark patterns are everywhere in everything Google does. They've basically become one of the ethically worst technology companies around. Is it inevit…
It's possible. Of course hard to imagine the kind of investor that is going to want to invest in a company like this and SV pretty much runs on VC money.
If given a choice, I'll take 1st percentile salaries at company w/o profit cap constitution over taking a pay cut. It's like, if you make $350k+ a year...just sort of budget that you might one day lose that job.
The vast, vast bulk of the country pays all their expenses, cares for their children, elderly family members, sick relatives and so on with <$100k salary. You can insure yourself against any hardship in unemployment with a top 1% salary.
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It's still real people who suffer when the numbers tell a different story - not charity cases.
18 billion. An incomprehensible number. I hate this “they’re not charities” bullshit.
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Why would the code be subpar? Is a google employee in US somehow more competent than the one in India? What you are thinking about was outsourcing which is very different than Google hiring in India. Just because you are paid more you are not a ‘better’ programmer
> Is a google employee in US somehow more competent than the one in India? It depends. There are people in India that are brighter and more hard-working than most people in the USA, just by statistical chance. But there is something that can happen there that I don't know what it is and affects some. In another job our company had a site in India and I remotely supported them. Most people I interacted with wanted ste…
I have always attributed this to the management of the consulting companies that supply the contractors - they're all about the billable hours, and quality control isn't really their problem so they don't focus on it.
Here's where this will backfire first: Google has studied team success and discovered psychological safety is a key component. Laying off people working on Google Assistant tells employees that if their project is canceled, you may be fired. Employees will respond by simply not working on anything that risks being canceled. Previously, employees had trust that they'd simply move to other projects.
The counterargument is that employees should be invested in the success of their project. That's a nonsencial argument. The average IC has zero impact on whether or not an SVP 6 levels above them wakes up one day and decides to cancel their project in favor of [latest hot thing] that day.
In fact, the very people who are responsible for the failure of a project are the least likely to get fired. They're the leaders who should be responsible for this. These VPs and above will simply move on to other projects.
As always, layoffs here are to suppress wages and create fear in remaining employees.
Google makes me kind of sad. They used to be so cool, pushing technology forward, making it accessible to the masses, doing things that seemed almost impossible and making it mainstream. Ads were the money stream but they did it tastefully. Now the main page is all ads, dark patterns are everywhere in everything Google does. They've basically become one of the ethically worst technology companies around. Is it inevit…
I'm beginning to believe that it's just impossible to do advertising ethically. The hypothesis is that an advertising firm that attempts to do so will perform worse than ones doing unethical things, and eventually lose customers.
(I'm separating the ethical matters in advertising from those in selling here, even if spreading awareness through advertising was made less unethical by removing the stalking and other irritations, that still leaves a lot of room for unethical sales techniques)
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I'm beginning to believe that it's just impossible to do advertising ethically. The hypothesis is that an advertising firm that attempts to do so will perform worse than ones doing unethical things, and eventually lose customers.
I've come to this conclusion a long time ago. If consumers have perfect information about a class of product from different producers then advertising would be completely useless and the market for that product would be completely efficient (on the consumer side). Of course consumers don't have perfect information, and that's what the marketing industry claims their purpose is to address. But really the role that the…
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Completely agree with this take. I worked in FAANG and before that I worked in various startups. Most of the people around me are very adapted to this very specific hyper-structured environment that we are in. This is not a criticism - they are thriving in this environment and everyone is happy. But no way would I want to take these people with me on a new venture. (the inverse is also true; I would not take a shoot-…
How do you reconcile your final paragraph/sentence with your own ability to succeed[1] in both environments? My experience is that the ability to adopt to structured/unstructured environments are not mutually-exclusive: some people may thrive in one but not the other, and others can do well in both (or none!) My motto is to make the right trade-offs in any environment - which is a universal superpower for engineers i…
And I probably only made it through because my employer had deep pockets and chilled while I took time to adapt. The other direction (big co -> startup) is no where near as forgiving.
Mottos are fine, but what we need to succeed is skill and practice with skills.
We are susceptible to innovators dilemma on a personal basis, and it’s hard to break habits and intuition hardened over years in a different environment.
And when I was in start up land I did watch a lot imported talent from FAANG come in and bomb out - they were trying to care about long term code quality and we needed to slap together a demo in 48 hours. It was like oil and water
Edit: btw I don’t mean to signal that it’s impossible to do to be someone who thrives in both situations. It was a comment on the original suggestion of “just start a new company and hire up all these lay offs to get rich quick”. I believe that’s not going to be a good strategy